To calculate your protein target for weight loss, multiply your body weight in kilograms by 1.0 to 1.2. That gives you a daily gram target. For a 180-pound person (about 82 kg), that works out to roughly 82 to 98 grams of protein per day. If you only know your weight in pounds, divide by 2.2 first to get kilograms, then multiply.
That baseline range works for most people in a caloric deficit, but your actual number shifts depending on how active you are, how much weight you’re losing, and whether you’re strength training. Here’s how to dial it in.
The Basic Calculation
Start with your weight in kilograms. If you weigh 160 pounds, that’s about 73 kg (160 รท 2.2). Multiply by 1.0 to 1.2, and your daily protein target lands between 73 and 87 grams. If you weigh 200 pounds (91 kg), you’re looking at 91 to 109 grams per day.
If you’re significantly overweight, using your current body weight can overestimate things. In that case, use your goal weight or an “ideal” body weight for the calculation instead. Harvard Health suggests capping intake at about 2 grams per kilogram of ideal body weight for healthy adults, which would be roughly 125 grams per day for someone with an ideal weight of around 140 pounds.
Why Protein Matters More During Weight Loss
When you eat fewer calories than you burn, your body doesn’t just pull from fat stores. It also breaks down muscle tissue for energy. Protein counteracts this by providing the raw material your muscles need to repair and maintain themselves. Losing muscle during a diet slows your metabolism, making it harder to keep weight off later.
Protein also burns more calories during digestion than any other macronutrient. Your body uses 15 to 30% of the calories in protein just to process it, compared to 5 to 10% for carbohydrates and 0 to 3% for fats. So if you eat 400 calories of protein, your body spends 60 to 120 of those calories on digestion alone. That metabolic advantage adds up over weeks and months of dieting.
There’s a hunger benefit too. Higher protein intake increases levels of hormones that signal fullness while suppressing the hormone that drives appetite. The practical result: you feel satisfied on fewer total calories, which makes sticking to a deficit considerably easier.
Adjusting for Exercise
The 1.0 to 1.2 g/kg range is a starting point for moderately active people. If you’re doing regular resistance training while cutting calories, you likely need more. Research from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute found that young men in a steep caloric deficit (40% below maintenance) who ate 2.3 grams of protein per kilogram lost significantly less muscle than those eating 1.0 gram per kilogram. Both groups lost weight, but the higher-protein group lost more of it as fat.
A practical middle ground for people who strength train regularly: aim for protein to make up 25 to 35% of your total calorie intake, or roughly 1.4 to 2.0 g/kg of body weight. For a 170-pound person lifting weights three to four times a week, that could mean 110 to 155 grams per day. The more aggressive your calorie deficit, the more important it is to push toward the higher end of that range.
How to Spread Protein Across the Day
Your body can only use so much protein at once to build and repair muscle. Research published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism found that about 0.24 grams per kilogram per meal is the threshold to fully stimulate muscle repair. For a 75 kg person, that’s roughly 18 grams per meal.
This means eating 90 grams of protein in one sitting and skipping it the rest of the day is less effective than distributing it evenly. If your daily target is 90 grams, aim for about 25 to 30 grams at each of three meals, with the remainder as a snack. You don’t need to be obsessively precise, but avoid loading all your protein into a single meal.
High-Protein Foods by the Numbers
Knowing your gram target is only useful if you can translate it into actual meals. Here’s how common foods stack up, based on data from Johns Hopkins Medicine. A helpful visual: a portion of meat the size of a deck of cards is about 3 ounces and provides roughly 21 grams of protein.
- Greek yogurt (plain, nonfat): 12 to 18g per 5 oz container
- Cottage cheese: 14g per half cup
- Chicken, turkey, beef, pork, or fish: 7g per ounce (a palm-sized portion is about 4 oz, or 28g)
- Eggs: 6g each
- Lentils: 9g per half cup
- Black, kidney, or navy beans: 8g per half cup
- Edamame (dry roasted): 13g per ounce
- High-protein filtered milk: 13g per 8 oz glass
- Peanut butter: 7g per 2 tablespoons
- Quinoa: 6g per third of a cup
Notice that plant proteins tend to come bundled with carbohydrates or fats, which adds calories. That doesn’t make them worse, but it means you may need to plan a bit more carefully if you’re relying mainly on plant sources to hit your target while staying within a calorie budget. Combining lentils, beans, tofu, and edamame across the day can get you there without meat or dairy.
A Sample Day at 100 Grams
Here’s what 100 grams of protein looks like in practice, to show it’s achievable without supplements or extreme meals:
- Breakfast: Two eggs (12g) plus a cup of high-protein milk (13g) = 25g
- Lunch: 4 oz grilled chicken breast (28g) on a salad with half a cup of black beans (8g) = 36g
- Snack: 5 oz Greek yogurt (15g) = 15g
- Dinner: 4 oz salmon (28g) with a third cup of quinoa (6g) = 34g
That totals about 110 grams without any protein powder, bars, or unusual foods. Swap in tofu, lentils, or cottage cheese and the math still works.
Upper Limits and Safety
For healthy people with normal kidney function, high-protein diets are well tolerated. Harvard Health puts a reasonable ceiling at about 2 grams per kilogram of ideal body weight per day. Going above that hasn’t shown meaningful extra benefit for most people and may simply displace other nutrients you need, like fiber from whole grains and vegetables. If you have existing kidney disease, protein needs are different and should be managed with your care team.
The bottom line: most people trying to lose weight do well between 1.0 and 1.6 g/kg, sliding higher if they’re training hard or cutting calories aggressively. Pick your number, spread it across your meals, and build each plate around a protein source first. The rest of the meal fills in around it.